Historic town's future is uncertain

The Chinese Camp Store and Kiwi Tavern is open for gas, beer and socializing. Amy Alonzo Rozak/Union Democrat, copyright 2009

With the future of the Chinese Camp School in limbo, the town, easily missed when driving along Highway 120, could become more invisible.
  

During the Gold Rush, Main Street bustled with Chinese immigrants. But now the brick buildings are being overtaken by weeds and untrimmed trees. Houses are boarded up and yards filled with junk.

But a sense of history still lingers.

On Wednesday afternoon, as the sun evaporated the previous night’s rain, one could imagine when Wheelock’s Saloon, Odd Fellows’ Lodge, the Rosenblohm Store and about a dozen other establishments lined Main Street.

Nowadays, the Kiwi Tavern — a bar/gas station/store alongside Highway 120 — and the post office are the only businesses open. The Chinese Camp Mill sits in the distance.

Michael Read, originally from New Zealand, moved to the area 21 years ago to work at the wood burning power plant a few miles away. He and his late wife bought the tavern in 1987.

“It was packed back then,” he said, adding that it was mostly because of his wife’s cooking.

Now, the store feeds off passing traffic heading to Yosemite and is closed in the winter, he said.

“The sign has said there’s 150 people since I moved here,” he said. “There’s more like 89 people now.”

It was on post-rain afternoons like Wednesday that Dolores Nicolini, a 50-year Chinese Camp resident, would find Gold Rush-era artifacts washed to the surface by the rain.

Nicolini, Chinese Camp’s unofficial historian, has a box of these finds collected over the years — mostly old coins.

“They’ll probably throw them away after I,” Nicolini said, before trailing off without finishing her sentence.

She was coy about her age, only saying she’s “scaring the hell out of 80,” but she has plenty of spunk that shows when she talks about the deteriorating town.

“People come and go,” she said. “They don’t care about the history of the place anymore.”

When she first moved to the area there were a lot of older people who were deeply rooted in the town’s history, she said. But the “old timers” have passed on and much of the passion for Chinese Camp’s vibrant history went with them, she said.

Most of the brick buildings still standing on Main Street are owned by Carol Perry, whose family connection to Chinese Camp dates back to 1921. Perry was not reachable for the story.    

In its heyday, Chinese Camp was home to 5,000 Chinese.

The mining camp was originally called Camp Washington until an Englishman brought a company of Chinese laborers to the camp to mine gold in the early 1950s.

Maybe the most infamous of Chinese Camp’s historic moments was the Tong War — an 1856 battle between Chinese clans in a meadow just west of Chinese Camp.

The battle was between rival Chinese clans, Sam Yap, of Rock River Ranch, and the Yan Woo, of Chinese Camp.

The brief battle, fought by about 3,000 people on both sides armed with make-shift swords, spears and tridents, was eagerly viewed by thousands.

“They were hysterical with exultation,” wrote an eyewitness. “There was no discipline nor order. Everybody marched as he pleased, or ran about hooting and shouting.”

Despite the raucous, only four people died in the battle.

“They gathered on Main Street and banged cooking pots ... nobody claimed to be a winner,” Nicolini said.

By the 1920s, the last of the Chinese left town, but a rich history was left.

“It makes me angry we can’t keep it looking nice,” Nicolini said.

What has been kept up is because of Nicolini and her late-husband, John Nicolini. 

Dolores Nicolini sometimes pays her gardener to trim Main Street’s weeds. In 1949, John Nicolini, who grew up in Chinese Camp, restored the town’s 1854 St. Francis Xavier Church, and Dolores has kept it looking pretty.

Dolores Nicolini also has interest in the Chinese Camp School’s future, because she was responsible for the building’s unique Chinese-style roof.

Also, John Nicolini was on the school board at the time the school was built.

“It’s a shame,” she said of the grim future for the school, which only has 16 students.

She added that if the school shuts, which is trying to be avoided, it will be another hit to Chinese Camp’s once-unique identity.

“It’s bleak,” she said, of the town’s future.